_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Italy_______________
Abortion law to be reviewed
New government open to change
Italy’s new center-right government moved forward quickly to advance the conservative agenda, with a minister calling for a review of the law allowing abortion.
Rocco Buttiglione, European Affairs Minister in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, proposed changing the law to include incentives for women to decide not to have an abortion. The current law allows abortion on demand for the first three months of pregnancy.
“Many women have abortions because they can’t afford (a child). We propose to help them financially,” Buttiglione was quoted as saying. “Others do so because their partners abandoned them or made them feel guilty, or because they have a difficult relationship with their parents. We propose individual or family therapy to support them in these difficulties.”
Under Buttiglione’s proposal, if a mother chooses to keep her baby, she would be given the equivalent of $440 for the first year after the child is born. The proposal would also make the biological father’s consent mandatory for minor girls to have an abortion.
Left-wing newspapers and politicians reacted strongly to the proposal, saying supporters of the review were taking their marching orders from the Catholic Church. “Questioning women’s right to choose: this is the real aim of the review of the law,” said Livia Turco, a former center-left minister for social affairs. She promised “harsh opposition” to any attempts to change the law.
Cardinal Silvio Oddi, RIP
Former prefect of Congregation for Clergy
Cardinal Silvio Oddi, a former prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, died on June 29, at the age of 91. Cardinal Oddi, who had been living in retirement in his native Piacenza-Bobbio, Italy, was one of the senior members of the College of Cardinals; he had received his red hat from Pope Paul VI in 1969. His death left the College of Cardinals with 180 members, of whom 132 were under the age of 80 and eligible to vote in a papal conclave.
Condemnation lifted from theologian’s works
Misinterpretation is still a risk
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has affirmed the orthodoxy of Father Antonio Rosmini Serbati, a 19th-century Italian theologian whose works were once condemned by the Holy See.
In 1887 the Vatican formally denounced 40 propositions which had been drawn from the writings of Father Rosmini. But the new note from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith remarks that the propositions were not advanced by Father Rosmini himself, but drawn from his work by other interpreters. The new Vatican note also points out that while the causes for condemning Rosmini’s work no longer apply, scholars who study his work would do well to read the 1887 condemnation as well, to gain a fuller perspective.
The Congregation—in a note signed by the prefect, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger —said that Father Rosmini’s work was marked by “great audacity and courage” if not even “reckless daring.” While recognizing the intellectual gifts and spiritual depth of the Italian priest—whose cause for beatification is being pursued—the Vatican also cautions that many of his teachings remain “a matter of theoretical debate.”
Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, cited Father Rosmini as a major contributor to the Church’s understanding of the relationship between faith and reason. However, even as he said that Rosmini ranks alongside Cardinal John Henry Newman as an influential thinker in that realm, the Holy Father cautioned that he did not intend to lend his support to the full body of Rosmini’s work.
New leader backs Church social teaching
An answer to problems of globalization?
Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has called attention to the “timely” message of the Catholic Church regarding the globalization of the economy.
The Italian political leader made his remarks in a July 4 interview with Vatican Radio. The interview was especially newsworthy in light of the fact that leaders of the “G8” industrial nations were set to gather in Genoa later in the same month. The G8 meeting had attracted considerable advance publicity in Italy, as demonstrators mobilized in protest against what they saw as injustices in the global economy.
“I find the message of the Church regarding globalization very timely,” Berlusconi told the radio audience. He said that in his private conversation with Pope John Paul II just one day earlier, he had discussed how the economic marketplace should not be structured so as to favor one group over another, and in particular that wealthy individuals and nations should not exploit those who are less powerful.
In preparation for the G8 meeting, a number of organizations dedicated to Catholic social teaching organized a symposium in Genoa. And even before that meeting convened, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi offered a public declaration that Catholic social teaching could offer direct answers to the problems of globalization.
An interview with Cardinal Tettamanzi appeared in the July 5 issue of the Italian daily La Repubblica. The cardinal is author of a book on the question, entitled Globalization: A Challenge, which was scheduled for publication in Italy this summer.
Cardinal Tettamanzi was recently called upon to bless the immense ship, European Vision, on which the G8 talks will be held. He admitted that he had felt uncomfortable blessing “such a luxurious craft,” but said he hoped that “if everyone is involved, the voices of the poor will be heard among those who are most powerful.”
The Genoa prelate told La Repubblica that Catholic social doctrine has always included a serious consideration of the responsibilities that come with economic and political power. This is the key to successful globalization of the economy, he continued: a moral solidarity between the rich and the poor. Globalization will have disastrous consequences, he said, if it becomes “a new colonialism of the weakest by the strongest, the poorest by the richest.” It will be beneficial, he added, if it is “a process that respects diversity among peoples, and distinguishes without trying to homogenize them.”
Cardinal Tettamanzi also observed that the “Seattle people”—the demonstrators who have staged bitter and sometimes violent protests around the cities where industrial leaders have gathered, starting with the WTO summit in Seattle last year—now comprise “a new cultural phenomenon.” While insisting that ordinary people must have a means of voicing their opinions and influencing the economic processes, he also observed that violence is not the appropriate way to achieve that end.
When he addressed the conference of Catholics gathered in Genoa, Cardinal Tettamanzi emphasized that young people in particular should work to right the wrongs of globalization. “The phenomenon is complex,” he said. “Although it increases potential, it exacerbates situations of conflict and injustice: it is a sort of new era, a new challenge which will leave its mark on this century, and so it primarily concerns you young people.”
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